


Even Demons Have A Home

by skyline



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5227274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How can a single man build him up and break him, and still warrant such devotion?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Demons Have A Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I call avoiding all my real world work. I don't even know.

Love is a razor’s edge. It is a sharp toothed smile and the feeltastetouch of blood. The pulse of it, slippery between fingers, the metallic rust of it on his tongue. The stain of it against perfect, white teeth.

It wasn’t always like this, Will thinks. The first girl he fell for smelled of peonies and bergamot. She wore a red brocade coat and toted books in a worn leather messenger bag. He remembers that she wore autumn colors in her hair, oranges and reds intertwined with brown that he’d run his hands through, just to make her smile.

That girl is a distant flash of light, one of the few his past holds, and he thinks of her with an in memoriam, funereal mourning. He can never be with anyone like her again. Not like her, or like Molly, who read crime trades and wore hiking boots, and sometimes could be find underneath a literal pile of puppies.

They were simple pleasure, where now his tastes are refined.

Besides, it was never just about love, or longing, or lust. Violent delights and the ever fixed mark. So passé. What exists now in the rich, dark cacophony of things that swirl between Will and Hannibal is more; an equality that no one else has never been able to match, and never could.

Hannibal is by nature unmatchable. And Will Graham? He’s a chameleon. He is everyone. He is no one. He slips in and out of psyches, each time a shade more twisted for it. Not a match, per se, but a kindred spirit. One of a kind, in and of himself.

The brutality of what they are doesn’t ache. It hasn’t for ages. It’s like he stopped existing when Hannibal wasn’t around, going through the motions, but never a real boy.

Maybe even before him. The older Will grew, the number he became to the idealistic expectations he’d held in his youth. Ethics. Morality. Whatever. They were the cage, and Hannibal was the key.

Of course, he is also the thing that needs to be kept caged. He is like love, all teeth and claws behind a gentle veneer. He covers Will’s body with his, stretches of skin and the warm suck of a mouth, none of it kind. He does not treat Will the way that he would a woman, all that carnality restrained, harnessed. Instead, they are the perfect storm, a kind of passion he’s never known. He submits to it again and again and again, with a kind of fascinated horror.

How can a single man build him up and break him, and still warrant such devotion? Perhaps Will _is_ broken. Or perhaps he is whole, now. That thought makes a twisted sort of sense. People have treated Will like he was just this side of fragile since before he could remember, respecting his boundaries in case he could be wrecked. Hannibal is the one who had no qualms pushing him right off the edge.

Will did not shatter.

Will became something else. Something new. Someone that he’s always been, lurking just around the corner.

Men who tame lions don’t fool themselves into thinking they’ve mastered the wild. Instead, the acknowledge the uneasy partnership between themselves and the beast. This is what Will does; he embraces the violence and the pain and the tremors of hunger, deep cuts of love and hate too tightly entwined. He embraces the knowledge that Hannibal might kill him at any given moment.

In return, Hannibal does the same. Their hands are wrapped around each other’s throats, even as they breathe life against their parted lips. And oh, there’s beauty in life. Will thought he had the high ground, knowing that, but he was wrong. Hannibal has always seen it, always known. It’s why he relishes exquisite things; opera, art, fine food, and lovely women.

Will is the one who wasn’t able to see the flip side, the magnificence and artistry of death. Now he is unmade. Not quite a predator, but at least an equal in the hunt.

Which they do, now. Sometimes in long, slow, drawn out games. Sometimes with an almost feral expediency. They appreciate the blood, and they appreciate each other. Will once thought he had to destroy them both, to kill Hannibal and himself so that the rest of the world could be safe.

Now he knows better. Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred, except for the slip of skin between them; the way he chokes on Hannibal’s cock right before his mouth is flooded with come, lips red and abused. The way that Hannibal gets on his knees and returns the favor, an elegant smile and the way he might (actually, literally) swallow Will whole.

They fuck, they fight, they crash back into one another time and again, the longest game of cat and mouse tempered by the mildest illusion of domesticity. This is what it’s like, being Hannibal Lecter’s lover.

There’s violence, there’s addiction, there’s absolute surrender. The two of them are at the top of the food chain, the top of the world. They are kings.

Long may they reign.


End file.
